HP Catalyst Metrics

This is how we are measuring our project.

The Challenge: Not enough students are going into STEM related fields upon graduating high school and college in the United States.This is especially noticeable in urban school districts.Students are not interested in going into STEm fields as career choices.Our project hopes to find an avenure in which to engage our students and inspire them to discover STEM related career fields.

Project Synopsis: Our project wishes to create a hands on learning experience for Stamford middle school students to collaborate with students from a Sister School in China around a real world science-related issue – Water Quality.By exposing students to an authentic real-time environmental issue, we hope to get more students interested in STEM while they work collaboratively with students in another country to seek common solutions to Water Quality together.After collecting data on local water quality, students will make conclusions based on their interpretation of the data. All project outcomes (including the project and processes of the project) will be posted on the Project Website.

Project Hypothesis: Secondary Students (at Scofield) who collaborate more successfully with students in China will perform better on the Water Quality Content Knowledge test than their peers (at Scofield and at other Stamford Middle Schools).

Target Population: The target population will be all 8th grade students (2011-2012 academic year)from Scofield Magnet Middle School.They are currently 7th grade students. The China Sister School will also have a selected number of targeted students for this project. We also expect to see further development amongst the teachers of this current target group.

Students from Scofield (7th graders in 2010-2011)

Students from another Middle School in Stamford not participating in project (also in th grade in 2010-2011)

We decided to compare one school's attitudes towards STEM and to another school's attitudes towards STEM within the same district and grade level. One school will work with their Sister School.The other school will not.

Treatment group 200 subjects; Comparison group 200 subjects

Demographics: Currently, 43% of families in Scofield (Stamford’s pilot school) are economically disadvantaged (quality for free/reduced lunch) and 45% are considered educationally disadvantaged (English Language Learners and/or Special Education).40% of the students are white, 32% Hispanic, 18% Black, and 10% Asian.The Middle School Attached to Shandong University has many scholarship students. They share access to technology resources through Shandong University, but have little opportunity to use technology in their own facilities. They have limited experiences in science field research or in using technology to collaborate across international boundaries.

We hope to demonstrate that students collaborating with Scofield’s Sister School will exhibit the following: